David Sugden
After many false starts with 'organised' web logs like Blogger - I gave
up and thought I'd have more interest and more input, if I did my own.
This is just a simple web page, so any
contributions will have to be via email
blog@village-e-learning.co.uk - I promise to edit very little and
to publish all lucid comments! Please state how I should sign you off
(anon; my name; my name and address etc). I've deleted the
comments feature, because of all the
spam I was getting - sorry! e-Mail me if you have anything to say -
address above.
Click here to go to beginning of blog.
I have recently been
honoured by becoming a TechDis Accredited Trainer.
This allows me to
provide training in the use of TechDis resources and techniques -
something TechDis themselves don't always have the capacity to do. The
idea is that those institutions who require training from TechDis are
presented with a list of private trainers from who to choose and
negotiate terms and content with. I am now one of those trainers -
please drop me a line.
13th May 2009
Many of my readers
will know that I've been looking for a new blog template to write my
'stuff' on. This self-penned HTML site has been written with the aid of
MS FrontPage since it first started back in
May 2005. Since Microsoft decided not to upgrade FrontPage to work
on Vista or with Office 2007 (and I've lost my disk to check the claim
that the old version doesn't work with either) I've had only
intermittent access to the software required to update. When I'm working
away with my Vista laptop, I can't blog the same (I can but have to use
other templates which don't fit the style of this particular blog).
And now the Vista
laptop is playing the silly bugger. (See more on this later)
So I've started
another blog at
http://eduvel.wordpress.com (there is a RSS feed from that page @
http://eduvel.wordpress.com/feed and can also be found on the top
left hand side of the page). The Wordpress blog will continue to have
the same sort of content as this one and where necessary will link back
to issues raised or commented in here. The real benefit of Wordpress for
me is that it will allow me to blog from anywhere, as it is totally web
based. It has nice clean lines and many of the features (such as
comments) I've been unable to supply on this site. I feel sad to be
moving but such things happen - we must move on.
I hope that you - the
500 or so visitors I get every three months won't mind coming over to my
new blog. Enjoy the ride. :-)
6th May 2009
I'm
currently sat in the Savoy Hotel in Blackpool. I'm on my second pot of
tea! I daren't try the coffee because I've been so disappointed with
hotel coffees over the years and don't want to be disappointed AS WELL
AS cold. The
first tea was nice enough to risk a second. But it's so cold! I'm sat in
the lounge, overlooking a dirty, murky sea on what is a pretty miserable
day outside. Sharon is doing her first LSN gig and back in the days
before we had a SatNav (she calls it Jeffrey) I volunteered to come
along with her as moral support and travel guide. As it was in my diary,
I left it there, all the time thinking - if it's nice I can walk the
Golden miles and if it's not nice I can sit in a hotel lounge and work!
Well it wasn't nice damn it.
Yesterday was the
RSC-NW Mobile Learning gig at the Leyland Hotel in Leyland. It wasn't
all that well attended but those that did come along seemed to get a
great deal out of it. There was much Twittering (#mnw09) and many
examples of good practice both active and emerging across the region.
The morning traffic was the worst I've seen it over there. I struggled
to get as far as the M60 in an
hour and only managed to get to the hotel
on time (after 1.75 hours) when a gap opened up in the traffic coming
off at Blackburn. Today wasn't much better, although we did make it to
this point 10-15 minutes earlier.
Last weekend was
Karen's surprise birthday weekend and it went like a dream. She was
completely bowled over by the people who had attended. The group was
pretty evenly spilt between family and ex-NLN Mentors. The Mentors had
clubbed together and bought her an iTouch for her birthday, which was
suitably well received. At this point I have not put the images onto
Flickr - but will do when I manage to collate them from the various
cameras. For now, enjoy the video!
26th April 2009
Sharon took the Americans back to
the airport on Wednesday while I set off early and went to
Derwentside College in
Consett. Here I was to meet members of my BDP PDA Cohort 1 to chat
about progress and to discuss ILT. It was a good productive meeting but
a long day out. Things didn't quite return to normal on the Thursday as
both Sharon and I had to travel down to London for some LSN training on
the Friday.
We set off on Thursday afternoon
because the trains were cheaper and we thought it would be nicer to have
an evening relaxing in the hotel instead of having to get up at 4.30am
on the Friday and still risk being late. We then thought it would be
nice to go and see a show on the Friday and stay over a further night
(well Sharon thought that - I just went along with it). We had a nice
but eventful dinner in the hotel. Eventful because I found a piece of
metal in my starter and because they couldn't understand why 'the
company' were laying for two people min the room - they must have
thought that I'd got lucky! It took someone from LSN the day after, to
sort that one out. The training went ok and in the evening - this time
we went to see
Joseph. Which was fine - but not at all what I expected. Tim Rice
and Andrew Lloyd Webber must have been tripping on Acid when they wrote
it . It was like a bible story told in the style of Monty Python
sketches with Elvis!
The saddest thing - and a real
reality check - was coming out of the theatre and making our way back
down The Strand. Other theatre were chucking out too and there was a
real stream of theatre goers making their way to various parts of
London. But lined up quietly along half the route (and patiently I must
add) were many (hundreds?) of homeless waiting for a meal. Aluminium
cartons of hot food were being unloaded from an unassuming red Transit
van and (presumably - I didn't see it happen) being handed out to the
unfortunate (the word depends on your opinion) recipients. When you
think that we, the theatre goers, had paid a minimum of £30 to see a
show and compare it to the day THEY must have had - it does make you
think.
We
spent Saturday at the museums
(how cultural) but only managed the Science and bits of the Victoria and
Albert Museums before it was time to go. The video above was taken on my
Nokia N95 8 gig via QIK.
17th April 2009
France was good.
We've just returned from a short
Easter break at Mark's place in Normandy. This time we took Gail,
Sharon's sister, with us. The Americans (Gail and their mum) had arrived
on April 1st - the day I was on eCPD duty in Leeds for cohort 2 (too
exhausted to blog about that at the time) and will go back next
Wednesday (I'm hopefully in Consett - but am just downloading 192 emails
before I can say for certain). They spent the first weekend in Wales.
Sharon drove them both down there on the Friday and left mum there - to
be 'kept' for a week before being 'transported' to Joanne's (the other
sister) in East Anglia - from where we picked her back up yesterday upon
our return from France. phew. (cont
.. 17th April 2009 ...)
Gail had been to Paris before but
not to the real France so we were able to allow her to experience some
very French things. Like the many men we saw urinating at the side of
the road (far more this trip than on any other trip Sharon and I have
made recently) and the mad way in which some town centres allow traffic
merging from the right to have right of way! And the rain! It poured
down every day (although to be fair not 'all' day) until Easter Monday.
This didn't stop us getting about and seeing many different parts of
Normandy including the D-day beaches, Mont St Michel (this was an in and
out job - one look at the car park and we took photos and did a runner -
all the way to Fourgeres) and Vire. There's nothing on the roundabout in
Vire (yet?) this year but we still managed to watch the madness that
goes on there every minute of every day.
We called at Giverny on the way back, to see Monet's garden and the
weather stayed kind to us. Sharon and I had been last year and had a
guided tour of the gardens and the house, so we were in a good position
this year to take the tour unguided. We'd been told that the gardens
changed with the seasons (doh!) and don't they just! Although
still early in the year - the gardens themselves only opened to the
public of April 1st - they were still a riot of colour and busy.
However, they were not as busy as in summer and the tour of the house
was much more rewarding than the first time we went.
I've spent a few hours looking at
work emails but have decided (having dealt with really urgent matters)
to leave them now until Monday - hopefully I'll feel more like working
then ;-0
This will probably be
the last post of this quarter, I'll have to start another page for
April. Just like last year and the
one before (2008;
2007) the quarter finishes with the
e-Guides National event.
This year's event,
like the one in 2007 was at the East Midlands Conference Centre
in Nottingham. This year, however, unlike the previous years, I didn't
get to blog any of the events live from the venue. This was partly due
to incompetence on my part (read on) and partly due to the changed face
of Web this last few weeks. I also delivered' three
workshops, so that cut down time a bit. My enjoyment of the first
evening, a discussion between
Gilly Salmon and
Alan Clarke was spoiled because I could
no long communicate with Jaiku via the phone. This ability was removed
when Google made Jaiku open-source earlier in the year and reduced the
qualities that Jaiku enjoyed over Twitter (although there are still
many). So, there I was, with only my crappy K850i (crappy in the sense
that internet communication via this model can be likened to sliding
down the side of a cheese grater - slow, painful and not something you
would choose to do). I did send the odd text to
Lilian to keep up my spirits. I'd
even forgotten about Ping.fm - which could at least have send
contributions to Jaiku and Twitter. There was plenty that I'd wanted to
say about the discussion these two eminent people were speaking about,
partly in agreement, partly in disagreement but mostly so I didn't
forget. But it goes to show that sometimes, the things we use and get
used to can change and that we have to be prepared.
I'm more prepared now though .. Finally, I've got my new phone - a Nokia N95, black 8 gig. It
arrived this morning, so it's still a mystery to me, but already I have
got it n my Web n walk contract and on my home WiFi - which will enable
me to be all the things that my
iPhone
was and wasn't (fingers crossed). I still need to set up Shozu,
email, download a QR code reader, set up my QIK connection and learn how
to save things - but wow - what a phone (for now). We've come over to
Crosby, near Liverpool this weekend, to see Tony and Gill at Gill's
sisters house, which overlooks the beach at Waterloo. We had a couple of
pints in the old pub round the back - where they still serve you at the
table. good atmosphere. Then we had a sumptuous and late supper with
lots of wine before going to bed. We needed the long and wind strewn
walk this morning - along the Crosby beach and around the Anthony
Gormley iron men. Loving the phone - although there are still a few
quirks.
http://dsugden.posterous.com/nokia-n95-8gig
Spring! This week has
been a lovely week for weather. Bright and sunny, if still a little
cold. Today, Sharon dropped my by the University and I walked up though
town, up past Kirklees College,
through the park and over Marsh to Quarmby. It got a bit windier up
there but as I dropped down through
Longwood
and up through Golcar it warmed up nicely. I had a cup of tea at home
before going down to Slaithwaite to pick my car up. Lovely morning.
Whilst still in town today, I saw that the local Traffic Wardens
have been renamed - Civil Enforcement Officers! What's all that
about?
We went to the
theatre last night to see Return to the Forbidden
Planet - by the Woodhouse Players, a local amateur dramatic
society. It wasn't the same quality as some of the professional
productions we've seen but was highly entertaining nevertheless. Because
the Lawrence Batley Theatre is
quite small, we were almost on the stage - which to be fair, added to
the sense of occasion. The players themselves seemed to be having as
good a time as us in the audience and we all ended up dancing in the
aisles. One thing that stood out for me (if you've never seen this play
you won't 'get' this) was the narrator: You will possibly remember
Patrick Moore doing the videoed narration in professional
productions? In this one, the older, well spoken guy was reading his
Shakespeare-like script in front of a modern Smart IWB!
The working week has
been as intense as others of late. On Tuesday I delivered a MoLeNET
m-Assessment workshop in Leeds. On Wednesday I met most of my PDAs at
the Cohort 1 day 2 event, also in Leeds and on Thursday I attended
TechDis Certified Trainer training in York. This is quite exciting and
potentially good for my business. I've always subscribed to the TechDis
ethos and working with like-minded others, those also attending the
training day, will be a pleasure. Yesterday, I spend the day with a
colleague who is interested in doing work in Turkey and we prepared a
planning document ready for her to deliver a conference paper in
Istanbul next month. She and I will deliver a week long European
Community Project course together in Leeds, in June - so, fingers
crossed!
This 'new' page was started on April 1st 2009. It was copied over from
the original file - which was re-named 2009_1.htm. Clicker was on 6,327
which was 500 visits since 1st January. (Jan = 516), (Sept = 5,311 + 516 = 5,827)
(July = 4,908 - 403) (March = 4,198- 780) 3,418
- 677 (Dec = 2,741 - 514)
(Sept = 2,227 - 629)
(March = 1,598).
coffee because I've been so disappointed with
hotel coffees over the years and don't want to be disappointed AS WELL
AS cold. The
first tea was nice enough to risk a second. But it's so cold! I'm sat in
the lounge, overlooking a dirty, murky sea on what is a pretty miserable
day outside. Sharon is doing her first LSN gig and back in the days
before we had a SatNav (she calls it Jeffrey) I volunteered to come
along with her as moral support and travel guide. As it was in my diary,
I left it there, all the time thinking - if it's nice I can walk the
Golden miles and if it's not nice I can sit in a hotel lounge and work!
Well it wasn't nice damn it.
one before (
Finally, I've got my new phone - a Nokia N95, black 8 gig. It
arrived this morning, so it's still a mystery to me, but already I have
got it n my Web n walk contract and on my home WiFi - which will enable
me to be all the things that my
